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Posted by Steve Ackman on March 10, 2008, 2:41 pm
Please log in for more thread options 05:02:52 -0400, Neon John, no@never.com wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Mar 2008 23:58:09 -0400, Steve Ackman
> wrote:
>
>> Yup. Oil here and now is $3.66/gallon.
>
> Daaaaaammmnnn, what part of the country do you live in, Steve?
The White Mountain Region of NH. Diesel was $3.89 at
last fill.
>> We leave the thermostat at 61. Depending on outside
>>temp and basement temp, the living room ranges from
>>64 to 68. The family room, where the thermostat is,
>>stays right around the setpoint, and the kitchen stays
>>about 59. Nights when the temperature goes into the
>>single digits or lower, we light a small fire in the
>>kitchen wood stove and with both stoves going, the oil
>>furnace never comes on. With just the pellet stove
>>heating the living room, the furnace comes on once or
>>twice a night when the outdoor temp is around 20F.
>
> Man, that sounds like a hard way to live.
Not really. Just wear a sweater/sweatshirt all the
time.
> Have you considered getting your walls injected with insulation?
Sure have been thinking about it. We've only lived
here for ~20 months, so things like replacing the furnace,
sliding glass doors, water heater, plumbing on the
apartment side, appliances, putting in wood/pellet stoves,
etc. etc. (it was a bank repo, so you may get an idea)
ate up all our initial improvement money.
We'll be pricing out blown in insulation this year
for sure though.
> One of my best friends lives in a house about that old and
> he's currently getting quotes from insulators for injected insulation. It is
> surprisingly economical. At your rate of fuel consumption, I bet it would pay
for
> itself in a year or two.
I've looked at the d-i-y kits. They're not cheap.
I've also read that d-i-y and having it done aren't
all that different in cost.
>> We have a multi-fuel stove, built to burn cherry pits,
>>olive pits, corn, etc. in addition to wood pellets, so
>>if wood pellets get too high, there may be other more
>>economical options. At one time, corn was cheaper than
>>wood pellets. Of course, in today's ethanol crazed
>>world, that's not the case. Cherry pits mostly come
>>from the northern midwest, and are less expensive than
>>wood pellets per ton, but at current prices, shipping
>>cherry pits isn't cost effective. If wood pellets go
>>up much at all, cherry pits could well be a solution.
>
> Have you tried any of the alternative fuels? I wonder how well it works.
I burned a few lbs. of green coffee beans as a test.
They burn fantastically. (I'd bet at least 9000 - 10,000
BTUs/lb. It would have to be some kind of heating
emergency to actually burn "real" beans, but I was
willing to waste a few lbs. of an ordinary Brazil I
had for the test.
Last year I saw an auction lot of 30,000 lbs. of
spoiled (some bags were moldy) robusta, but it
disappeared off the auction site before I could
investigate. My guess is somebody somewhere decided
to go ahead and roast those moldies and hope nobody
would notice. Anyway the auction ended early, with
no indication of what the final price ended up being.
I also tried burning wood chips from my chipper.
They're not as dense as pellets, nor are they uniform.
They'd work if I screened them first and would burn
better mixed 50/50 with pellets.
> I've experimented with a few alternative fuels this winter in my Buck Stove
fireplace
> insert. Peanut and pecan hulls, both fairly plentiful in this area, worked
quite
> well. Peanut hulls seem to work a bit better. This is a case of just shovel
'em on
> and let 'em burn. I wonder if your feeder would feed the shells if they were
> processed through a mulcher first?
Peanut hulls are soft enough they'd probably feed
without any processing. The auger is quite heavy,
and the stepper motor driving it has torque to spare.
As with cherry pits, peanut/pecan waste likely wouldn't
be economical here at present due to shipping cost.
>> On really cold nights, I dump a few cups of used
>>motor oil in the hopper (~50 lbs of pellets) to be
>>soaked up by the pellets, and tweak the combustion air
>>up a bit. We only dirty a few gallons of motor oil a
>>year, but I can't think of a better way to get rid of
>>it than by heating the house with it.
>
> I'd wondered how that would work with pellet stoves.
Yesterday I was monitoring the register temperature
shortly after cleaning and saw ~175F with a pellet feed
rate of about 75 lbs./day. About an hour after I added
oil to the hopper, the register temp was up to 186.8F.
I know that doesn't give any idea of the actual BTUs I'm
getting from adding waste oil, but it sure makes me
feel warmer. ;-)
> I'm doing something similar
> here. I drilled a small hole, just large enough to pass a 1/4" steel line
through
> the wall of my insert. A small tank hangs under the mantle. A needle valve
controls
> the flow. I fill the tank with used oil, build a wood fire and then adjust
the valve
> to slowly drip oil on it.
If possible, I'd position the tube to drip near where
the combustion air enters.
> I've come upon a practically unlimited supply of used oil (a
> friend with a dirt moving business and lots of heavy equipment) so I'm going
to work
> out something more automatic next year. Probably some form of gravity-fed pot
> burner.
I'm sure you'll keep us aprised. ;-)
>>2) Mass/space.
>> Yup. That's FOURTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS of pellets. It
>>sounds like a lot, and it is. I had 3 pallets put under
>>a carport, 3 pallets next to the porch, and 1 pallet
>>at the bulkhead, where I right off moved it to the
>>basement.
>
> Jesus! My back hurts even thinking about carrying that much fuel. How do you
> physically burn that much? Your stove must run on high fire continuously.
During Dec/Jan/Feb, yeah. I had it set to burn about
80 lbs./day. Nov/Mar average about 65 lbs./day. Oct. was about
20lbs./day.
> How does
> the heat content on a weight basis compare between pellets and cord wood? I'm
trying
> to visualize that much cord wood.
Cordwood contains a lot more moisture, so it's not a
direct weight to BTU comparison. "They say" a cord runs
about 4000 to 4500 lbs. and "they say" a ton of pellets
approaches a cord in net heat content.
Our pellet stove is rated 85% efficient, and our
EPA approved kitchen wood stove is rated at 82% IIRC.
>> For those who might point out that cord wood also
>>shares many of those advantages, I might add that
>>pellets have the advantage of only needing to tend the
>>stove once or twice a day, and cleaning only once a
>>week. Wood stoves (ours anyway) needs to be fed every
>>30 minutes if we keep a low fire going, or every 60-75
>>minutes for a roaring fire, and needs a cleaning every
>>day or two.
>
> What kind of stove was that?
It's a little one. Let me see if I can find a link...
http://englandsstoveworks.com/13-nc.html
And while I'm at google, here's the pellet stove we
have: https://www.usstove.com/products.php?id=2 or
for the whole manual:
https://www.usstove.com/Downloads/6039%20rev%20B.pdf
> I've never had one that required that much attention.
We didn't buy any wood this year, so when I do
fire up the kitchen stove, it's mostly with
construction crap from next door. If you load the
stove up with spruce/pine/whatever, and turn the air
down, it still burns hotter and faster than I want
just to heat the kitchen. I throw in a 16" long piece
of 2x2 say, and an equal length of 1x4, and in about a
half hour, they're nothing but coals. If I do that
about every half hour, I can keep the kitchen at a nice
70F or so all evening, without gumming up the chimney.
This year, I've also filled up milk cartons or
oatmeal boxes with pellets and thrown those in the
stove. That also gives a faster and hotter burn than
an equivalent log.
> My old Ashley required maybe 3 fuelings a day. My homemade wood furnace held
a day's
> worth. My current Buck insert needs 3-4 fuelings, depending on the outside
> temperature. Its firebox is quite small.
If I load it up with hardwood before bed and cut
back the air, the surface of the stove is still warm
to the touch in the morning, and the kitchen is the
warmest room in the house.
> Ashes get cleaned maybe twice a week. I sift my ashes to recover the
charcoal.
> My sifter is a coal shovel with the floor cut out and
I use a kitty litter scoop.
>> Pellets also burn SUPER clean. Maybe even cleaner
>>than oil. I can see faint whisps of smoke coming off
>>the oil chimney, but absolutely nothing at all from the
>>pellet vent. It could just as easily be a dryer vent
>>for all you can tell by the exhaust.
>
> Have you had that oil burner tuned up lately?
The manual tells the service guy to adjust the air
to get a "number 2 smoke". I don't know how much
that means exactly, but it's definitely visible.
> It might pay you to do so, as a
> properly tuned burner won't smoke at all except a little at ignition.
Well, I guess it depends on whose definition of
"properly tuned" you go by. It would seem the folks
who write the manuals for Newmac have a different
idea about that.
> Back to the OP's question. Before settling on a fuel, I suggest two things.
One,
> investigate having your walls insulated with one of the spray-in technologies.
> Regardless of the amount of fuel you burn, you won't be truly comfortable
until you
> do that. Cold floors, drafts and all that.
>
> Second, evaluate your local market to see which fuel is cheapest. Around here
it is
> cord wood, the going rate for mixed hardwood being around $80/cord.
Man! What is that? 12 foot lengths before the
additional delivery charge?
> I've learned
> from this group that folks elsewhere pay a LOT more so it wouldn't hurt to
check
> around.
Last year we got seasoned-cut-split-delivered for
$200. Oil went up... Wood went up. You couldn't find
any seasoned this past fall for less than $250 and that
was picking it up yourself. (I found green available
for $190 delivered) Ironic that we're on the border of
"The Great North Woods" and wood is so expensive.
Pellets were $235 until about the middle of February
when they dropped to $205. No matter what sector of
the energy market you're talking about, it's all
highly volatile.
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